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For the second time today I nurse a mug of peach liquor, a tea common in the camps. My hands help to insulate its porcelain sides and it warms me on the way down, and so for the past half hour we've been comforting each other. On the fire is a hedgehog goulash, likely burnt onto the bottom of the kettle by now for lack of attention. I do not feel like rising to stir it. My body remains seated while I let my eyes wander around the room; releasing memories from the simple surroundings at a glance.
Still spread out from the morning are my deck of tarot cards, worn thin with much use. The bed is unmade as always, a carpetbag lying open and nearly filled on the blankets. I have only a few more items to gather before it will travel to new countries. There are the cards to pack for a start, though I may choose to keep them on my person instead. On the wall beside the doorway hangs my hat, grey and weathered, with what was once a black velvet band circling the crown, now mostly frayed away by rough living. There is space beside this for a second hat, where René usually places whichever piece of millinery he has currently stolen.
No...used to place. Past tense.
I let the melancholia of this last thought wash over me as I rise to tend the kettle—it serves to stir up a restlessness in my chest that lately I can never fully repress; a longing for home, a need for change. Some might observe this unrest and brand it as ordinary wanderlust, claiming that such makes up the untamed blood that runs through the veins of the Rom.
But I know otherwise.
It is not that I cannot remain in one place. Were there merely my own wishes to consider, I am content to stay where I am. I am happy among the community of Romani at Montreuil, within the walls of this tent—now solely mine for many months. Yet that is the trouble. I would much rather share it, although not with merely anyone.
My jewelry flashes in the amber light of the candles burning on the table, casting flecks of spectrum light as I move to stack the scattered cards. On my left hand I wear four rings: one for every man who would have made me his wife. I smile grimly when I think of the first stubborn fool who might have wed me had not my father died before he could give me away. René thought it all nonsense from the beginning. He said that I could not be broken, and wagered that the threat of a whip from a tyrannical husband would only make me stronger. He was right. I have since cast off every man who dared to think of me and I rule myself, having lived alone but for René.
With unconscious tenderness I tuck into my bag a small sack of dried peaches from the Montreuil orchards, a gift for a brother in a foreign city, now gone for over a year. Tomorrow I will sail to London and make him return with me whether he would or not. If I can find him, I will bring René home. He is all I have left.
He owes me this.
We owe this to each other.